The company needed a new head of product. So they promoted their best salesperson.
He’d hit every number for six years. He understood the customer. He knew how to win.
None of that is product management.
This happens constantly, in sports and in business. Someone succeeds wildly in one domain, and an organization concludes the skill travels. Confidence gets mistaken for competence. Charisma gets mistaken for craft.
Meanwhile, the person already doing the job, the one with the actual domain expertise, gets quietly replaced by someone more “proven.”
Proven at what, exactly?
The uncomfortable question every leader should ask before a promotion like this: are we hiring for the results this person achieved, or for the specific skill this new role requires? Those are rarely the same thing.
The org chart doesn’t care about your track record somewhere else. The job cares whether you can do this job.
Who’s sitting in your organization right now, doing the work well, about to get replaced by someone with a better résumé and the wrong expertise?
Sometimes it succeeds; most times it fails, and then we fail twice.
